NCsoft - Tim Cain Promoted at Carbine Studios

October 16th, 2008, 01:10

A press release from NCsoft announced Tim Cain's appointment as Design Director of Carbine Studios:

NCsoft's Carbine Studios Names Tim Cain Design Director
Fallout producer and designer now becomes design director for unannounced Carbine Studios project
ALISO VIEJO, Calif., Oct. 7, 2008-Computer game developer Carbine Studios™ today announced the promotion of industry veteran Tim Cain to design director of the studio's unannounced massively multiplayer online (MMO) game. Located in Orange County, Calif., Carbine Studios is part of NCsoft, the world's premier publisher and developer of MMO games.
Cain, a 25-year veteran of the game industry, has been with Carbine since its inception in 2005 and has held the position of programming director. He is best known for his work as producer and designer on the highly successful computer role-playing games Fallout and Fallout 2. In 1998 he left Interplay and co-founded Troika Games, where he helped to design and program the award winning titles Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, The Temple of Elemental Evil and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.
"I couldn't be more pleased," said Cain. "The team at Carbine is one of the most talented and experienced groups I've ever worked with. I'm happy to be a part of it and we're looking forward to the day when we can unveil this incredibly exciting project to the world."
"It's great to have Tim Cain heading up design at Carbine," said Jeremy Gaffney, executive producer at Carbine Studios. "Tim is one of the most respected guys in the business and his track record of creating hit products is well documented. Having Tim at the helm as design director makes an already strong team that much better."
For more information on Carbine Studios and current job openings there, go to http://www.carbinestudios.com.

Great news. Another must buy for me. The concept art on the site look interesting. The only thing that kind of puts a damper on this news is the hippy nonsense jibber-jabber Cain spouted about the game known as Fallout 3. You know he wants to kick in the door at bethesda and stab everyone in the face and then urinate in their stab wounds for outbidding him on the license; or thats what I want to believe and will not let anything change my mind, no matter what comes out of the horses mouth. Especially since the horse probably wants to build bridges instead of burn them, since it seems a big part of being a mmo lead is PR.

So Anderson is the only one that gets to work on a Fallout title, and Leonard goes from good rpgs to Diablo (which I might've actually bought without Leonard working on it just because of how they are treating the title in regards to the series in the face of how bethesda is treating the game known as FO3 in regards to the series), and Cain is head of another MMO. And we have that other guy making the sci-fi squad-based tactical game that sounds fantastic. Anyone one else from Troika doing anything big?

Not necessarily addressed to you, but: I notice people sometimes confuse the Troika trio with the original developers of Fallout. According to its own credits, Fallout 1 had six people responsible for its "core design": Scott Campbell, Jason Taylor, Chris Taylor, Leonard Boyarsky, Tim Cain and Jason D. Anderson. I'd personally say some other guys (like T-Ray Isaacs (responsible for a lot of art design), Scott Everts (technical design) or Jess Heinig (designed SPECIAL together with Cain and Chris Taylor) are also sold short.

Apropos, there's two of the original Fallout core developers working on Fallout Online: Jason D. Anderson and Chris Taylor.

Originally Posted by Brother None
Not necessarily addressed to you, but: I notice people sometimes confuse the Troika trio with the original developers of Fallout. According to its own credits, Fallout 1 had six people responsible for its "core design": Scott Campbell, Jason Taylor, Chris Taylor, Leonard Boyarsky, Tim Cain and Jason D. Anderson. I'd personally say some other guys (like T-Ray Isaacs (responsible for a lot of art design), Scott Everts (technical design) or Jess Heinig (designed SPECIAL together with Cain and Chris Taylor) are also sold short.

Apropos, there's two of the original Fallout core developers working on Fallout Online: Jason D. Anderson and Chris Taylor.

I ment of the troika guys. I'm a much bigger troika fan than a FO fan. I would've liked nothing more than for troika to have won the bid for the license, and I strongly feel that would've been the only way to have a true FO3. The first of my few posts at NMA stated my regard of Sawyer's "FO3."

I loved everything about FO1 and 2 besides the party system and, the biggy, combat. The FO3 I dreamed of Troika making would've had a party like Arcanum, took TB combat as seriosly as ToEE, and would've had Ironman mode like ToEE. I know their demo "post-apoc" game had RT combat for the sake of securing funds, but I feel it in my bones that Troika would've had a pure-tb FO3 (with the correct perspective as well).

And if I was trapped on a desert island and had to pick between either Interplay's whole line-up or Troika's, i would pick Troika in a second. The only companies I would have to think about vs. troika's three games are SirTek, SSI, and MPS. I am a troika fanboy, enough so that I feel such a debt to those guys for being the only glimmer of hope for games in a very dry and retarded era for computer games that I will blindly buy any crap game they work on for the rest of my life, including the fake rpg that was a good chunk of the catalyst that destroyed the whole rpg genre, diablo (BG being the another big chunk, and the piss poor taste of "rpg" fans filling in the layers).

Last edited by Corwin; October 16th, 2008 at 07:23.
Reason: Last paragraph was inappropriate for this site.

Other Troika members

October 23rd, 2008, 16:57

This is Michael Dean. I was one of the original artists on Fallout. I know Chad Moore, formerly of Troika, is also employed at Carbine. Gary Platner, formerly of the Fallout team, is at Blizzard. That helps you put two more people in place. Not sure where T-Ray is lately, as we've fallen out of touch.